Nilufer and Alpel's sailing adventures in the Eastern Caribbean. Stories of a lifestyle on a 38 ft Lagoon catamaran, covering from Portorico to Grenada, and from 2011 to date, with pictures.

Sunday, June 5, 2011

A Caribbean Celebration

27 May 2011 (cont.)
We successfully took a mooring ball ($25/night) and started waiting for our son’s arrival that night. We couldn’t go for a swim off the stern as we wished however. We thought the calm bay would be polluted due to crowded anchorage and the relaxed rules in BVI regarding holding tanks on yachts. They do not require holding tanks, and most yachts sailing in these waters either don’t have them, or the yachters do not use them.
Devrim arrived, an hour late on an 8 seater Cessna twin engine airplane (Cape Air) connecting from Porto Rico. It was fun and a pleasant experience walking right out of the terminal building to the shore (a short 250m pathway!) where our dingy was tied at one of the small jetties.
28 May 2011
It is a nice sunny day, perfect for lazing on the deck. Around noon we ventured out to the east end of the bay on our dingy, however, the rocky and grass bottom with lots of shell fish close to shore prevented us from beaching the dingy, although the white sandy beach was inviting. At 4:30 Nel and I “dingied” over to the airport again, this time to see our daughter Ayse arrive from Istanbul, via Paris and St. Martin. That night we lighted up the charcoal barbeque on Ruyam II and had wonderfully marinated grilled chicken with Shiraz. (Nel created a special marinate just for the Caribbean that night. She may share the recipe with you in a future blog, after trying it out one more time.)
29 May 2011
It is a “big” day; It is Nel’s 60th birthday. We all had a quite night at Trellis bay, and to my amazement everyone was up early. We sailed (actually motored most of the way due to very light winds) to Road Town, and dropped anchor again just outside the harbour. Looks like we will prefer staying in the breeze outside of the sheltered harbours this time of the year when the winds are light and the stormy season had not started yet, because the marinas and inner harbours get very hot and are full of bugs. The children complained that I anchored too much out and in the middle of the channel entering Road Harbour, but I wanted to stay a bit away from the two rocky break-waters and the Ferry dock lining the two sides of the channel. I took the old leaky dingy with a temperamental outboard engine over to the BVI Yacht Charters, who had promised to lend me another until I bought myself a proper one.
We all dressed up that night, had a quick celebration of Nel’s birthday on deck with champagne and went into town to have a wonderful dinner at the Marie’s by The Sea hotel (was it spelled Mary’s? I don’t know). We tried Conch and other sea food dishes that were very well prepared and very elegantly garnished and served on proper tablecloth and china. We were all impressed by the quality of the restaurant, (although I did have lunch at that restaurant earlier when I visited Road Town with my friend and our long time skipper Capitan Deniz during Tortola’s worst storm and floods 6 months ago. At that time they had reluctantly set up a table for us on the patio, thinking of us as the crazy tourists from Canada, who were willing to sit out at a dry corner of the partially flooded veranda. But they didn’t have the same elegance on that day). Before the dinner was over the server surprized us with a complimentary slice of cake on a nicely decorated plate, with Happy 60’th Birthday written with chocolate sauce and four forks.